Take a bow, New Paradigm Theatre Company!
The New Paradigm Theatre Company, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit theatre, is a hybrid professional and community theatre that combines Broadway and film professionals with local students and adults in its productions. The theater group will now call the Stratford High School theater its home, and the first show will be Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The company opens its programs to the students at both Bunnell and Stratford High.
Through classes, seminars, workshops and shows, the company offers students performance opportunities as well as education on the backstage side, including lighting and sound systems. Students are side by side with professionals, who combine artistic and technical techniques with experiential and project-based learning activities.
The shows partner with different social justice nonprofits that reflect the theme of each show, highlighting the work they do in the community and teaching the youth about their missions. This transformative ‘spotlight’ is a platform that fosters creative and critical reasoning skills necessary for problem solving, global thinking, and leadership growth. It also creates new volunteers for these partners, and often new funding.
Founder Kristin Huffman literally has a lifelong deep and varied history in performing. She is the product of an alto junior-high school music teacher and a baritone Lutheran minister/professor, and her brother is an educator and a tenor. Her formative years consisted of flute, theatre, voice and piano lessons, along with performing and traveling throughout Virginia as a family. The Huffman family also performed in Ohio for local non-profit organizations and businesses.
In high school, Huffman created a singing group called Friends and Neighbors, who performed for corporations and churches in various towns throughout Ohio. When she won the title of Miss Ohio and became a runner-up to Miss America, she began producing and performing in earnest for non-profit fundraisers. After making her Broadway debut in the Tony Award winning musical Company, her pool of ‘friends and neighbors’ grew to include many other Broadway performers who felt strongly about supporting the arts, education and community-based organizations. From then to now, service through the performance arts remains embedded in Kristin’s personal value and mission.
As an adjunct professor at the University of Hartford, Kristin currently trains singers and actors for a life “on the wicked stage.” She is a member of Actors Equity Association (AEA), Screen Actors Guild (SAG/AFTRA), National Association of Teachers (NATS), The CT CHAPTER of The League of Professional Theatre Women, and she frequently judges international choir competitions in the US and Canada. Kristin graduated Summa Cum Laude from both Capital University Conservatory of Music BM (Music Ed: flute and voice concentration) and Northwestern University (Masters of Music-Opera)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory performances, August 9th – 11th
For tickets and more information, go to: https://nptheatre.org or call 203-357-5021
